Evaluation of the visual and auditory theory of mind test performances of individuals with autistic traits

The main purpose of this research is to determine a profile for social cognition and personality traits, especially theory of mind (ToM) skills, of individuals with or without autistic traits in a healthy adult population that the distribution of autism-like traits is defined. In this context, two interrelated studies, Study I and Study II, were performed. The aim of Study I is to determine the distribution and prevalence of autistic traits in the university student population between the ages of 18-35 and to determine the factors affecting autistic traits. In this vein, the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) was conducted to determine the autistic traits of a total of 991 volunteer university students (815 females and 176 males) with a mean age of 20.09 (range 18-35 years) in Study I. The scores of the participants on the AQ ranged from 3 to 38 points, showing a normal distribution with a mean of 17.27 (±4.689). In the study where the cut-off criterion was taken 1.5 standard deviations above and below of the AQ mean to distinguish participants with high and low autistic traits; it was determined that the AQ cut-off point was 9 for low autistic traits and 23 for high in the non-clinical young adult population. Accordingly, the findings showed that 9.9% of the population has high autistic traits and 6.6% of individuals has low autistic traits. In addition, it was revealed that the autistic traits of the participants differ according to sociodemographic factors such as gender, education level and monthly income. In Study II, firstly it was aimed to develop a valid and reliable Auditory Mind Reading Test (AMRT) was developed to measure ToM skills of healthy adults, and to compare social cognition levels such as empathy, mentalization and ToM skills of participants with low and high autistic traits, who were at the two ends of the distribution determined in Study I. With the AMRT's stimulus selection, validity and reliability studies were conducted with a total of 186 (93 females) volunteer university students between the ages of 18-25. The internal consistency of the form A of AMRT is .83 and the internal consistency of the form B is .76 and the split-half reliability is .87. The content validity of the test was .82, and the construct validity was found to be .96 for the form A of AMRT and .95 for the form B. In Study II, two groups, a total of 52 volunteer university students, with low and high autistic traits were compared with social cognition and personality tests. These groups separately include 25 participants (23 females and 2 males) with low autism scores and 27 participants (23 females and 4 males) with high autism scores. The age of the participants ranged between 19 and 25 years with a mean age of 20.94 years. The findings of the study showed that the cognitive empathy and social skills scores of the participants with low autistic traits were significantly higher than the group with high autistic traits (p=.046 and p=.001 respectively). On the other hand, it was observed that although the difference between the mentalization and ToM scores of the two groups with low and high autistic characteristics was in favor of the group with low autistic traits, it did not reach a significant level (p<.05). Moreover, the study pointed out that the personality profiles of individuals with high autistic traits were characterized by high neuroticism and low extraversion (p=.006 and p=.000, respectively).